Speaker
Description
Analysis of the polarization of electromagnetic radiation, or polarimetry, is a unique tool that allows us to obtain information about astrophysical objects that cannot be obtained in other ways, for example, regarding their geometry. With the launch of the IXPE (Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer) mission at the end of 2021, this instrument became available in the X-ray range as well. In my talk I will give a brief overview of the results obtained during the first two years of IXPE observations of accreting neutron stars, mainly focusing on the highly magnetised ones (X-ray pulsars, XRPs). It was found that in all observed XRPs, the measured value of the degree of polarization is below 15%, which is much less than the theoretically predicted values. In some pulsars, it was possible to study in detail the variations in the degree of polarization and the polarization angle as a function of the rotation phase of the neutron star, which, in turn, made it possible to determine the geometric parameters of the system. I will discuss the physical mechanisms that could potentially explain the unexpected polarization properties observed in XRPs.
